Brad on pre-season

Brad Friedel is experiencing his 16th pre-season in England – and he’s seen plenty of changes over the years.

The USA goalkeeper joined Liverpool in December, 1997 and has since made over 450 appearances in the Premier League in his spells at Anfield, Blackburn, Villa and now here at Spurs.

Now 42, he’s seen it all – and perfectly placed to give us an insight into how the summer’s hard work has developed since his first pre-season of 1998.

“For a start, we all come back more physically fit than we did 10, 15 years ago,” said Brad.

“And we play football from day one, that’s good.

“We might have a few running days but by and large, we ease back into it. What we then look for is more match practice as we go along.”

So what about the goalkeeper’s programme over the six weeks – July 8 to the big kick-off on August 18?

“You want to maintain physical fitness, core stability, stretching and all the fibres in your muscles to be loose and limber because all of a sudden we’ll be diving a lot and put into positions that we’ve not been in for several weeks,” added Brad.

“It’s important to have base fitness, to be hydrated and from there we can pretty much do our normal training routine.”